I’ve concluded that I hate the love that I deserve.

It sounds insane, but the more I reveled in the mess of the insanity I realized a lot of the Black women around me do too. This realization has came over the lovely Valentine’s Day weekend where the beautiful movie The Photograph starring Issa Rae, and LaKeith Stanfield rocked the Box Office. It seems like right after the debut of the movie timelines were littered with critiques like:

“That’s it?”

“There was no climax!”

“It was so boring!”

I didn’t get it! The movie was beautiful: the movie was straight to the point, there was love between Black people without heartache like we had after Queen & Slim.

It wasn’t making sense…until that same night I got home with my boyfriend, and took in all the small things he had done for me–that night!–that I tried to reject; the small things he had done for me this month that felt like he had gone out of his way to do. I thought it was merely just things you do for folks you loved.

I keep replaying how much I rejected these small (but very large in principle) things, the same way viewers were rejecting simple love between Black people, love without violence, love with small affirmations, vulnerable love. We rejected what was more than deserving for two people, and we do it in our own lives too.

I can’t express how much my heart keeps aching, thinking about how we as women can constantly reject simple love; passionate and deserving love; to continue a cycle that we’re more used to, and that seems more ‘practical’ than accepting what is or is not healthy. What is for us, what is comforting in nature, what is fulfilling in spirit all to keep running back a broken tired ole story of “Black love”. We are so used to the pain of trying to be loved, of ‘being in love’ or some climatic event that either blows a couple apart of keeps them together.

I hate it.

No, not the love that I deserve, but I hate the fact we as women reject what is healthy because it is so foreign to some of us! I hate us not just loving our beautiful brown love, I hate how our self-sabotaging ways–just to be able to tell ourselves “I knew it was too good to be true!”. I want us to love love. I want us to want to fold laundry for someone (because there’s no truer love of course). I want us to let our feet be rubbed. I want us to accept the small, and large tokens of love.

I want to love the love that I deserve.

[images from comingsoon.net and dailybeast.com]